ABSTRACT
Nationalist China took an active part in the setting up of the UN, and was also quite supportive of the incorporation of human rights statements in the new international body's statutes and other instruments. When the Human Rights Commission in charge of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was set up in 1946, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, one of its two vice-chairs was the Chinese representative P. C. Chang. In the eighteenth century, when progressive ideas with respect to human rights had been first put forward in Europe, translations of Chinese philosophers had been known to and had inspired such thinkers as Voltaire, Quesnay, and Diderot in their humanistic revolt against feudalistic conceptions. Chinese ideas had been intermingled with European thought and sentiment on human rights at the time when that subject had been first speculated upon in modern Europe. A declaration of human rights should be brief and readily understandable by all.
